Hearing loss can impact many aspects of your daily life. Your pastimes, your professional life, and even your love life can be affected by hearing loss, for instance. For couples who are coping with hearing loss, communication can become tense. Animosity can develop from the increased stress and more frequent arguments. In other words, left uncontrolled, hearing loss can negatively impact your relationship in significant ways.
So how are relationships affected by hearing loss? In part, these tribulations happen because the parties aren’t aware of the hearing loss. Hearing loss usually is, after all, a slowly advancing condition. As a result, you (and your partner) may not recognize that hearing loss is the underlying cause of your communication issues. Workable solutions may be hard to find as both partners feel increasingly alienated.
Frequently, a diagnosis of hearing loss along with helpful strategies from a hearing specialist can help couples start communicating again, and better their relationships.
Can relationships be affected by hearing loss?
When hearing loss is in the early stages, it can be hard to identify. Couples can have substantial misunderstandings because of this. The following common issues can develop because of this:
- Arguments: Arguments are fairly common in almost all relationships. But arguments will be even more aggravating when one or both partners are dealing with hearing loss. For some couples, arguments will break out more often due to an increase in misunderstandings. For others, an increase in arguments could be a consequence of changes in behavior (for instance, increasing the volume on the television to painful volumes).
- Feeling ignored: When someone doesn’t respond to what you say, you’re likely to feel disregarded. This can often happen when one partner is suffering from hearing loss and doesn’t know it. The long-term health of your relationship can be significantly put in jeopardy if you feel like you’re being disregarded.
- Intimacy may suffer: In lots of relationships, communication is the foundation of intimacy. This can cause a rift to build up between the partners. As a result, hearing loss may introduce friction throughout the relationship, leading to more frustration and tension.
- It isn’t unusual for one of the partners to blame hearing loss on “selective hearing”: Selective hearing is what occurs when someone hears “we’re having cake for dessert” very distinctly, but somehow does not hear “we need to take out the trash before we eat”. In some instances, selective hearing is a conscious action, in other cases, it’s quite unintentional. Spouses will often start to miss particular words or phrases or these words and phrases will sound jumbled when one of them has hearing loss. This can sometimes lead to tension and resentment because one spouse confuses this for “selective hearing”.
Often, this friction starts to happen before any formal diagnosis of hearing loss. Feelings of resentment might be worse when parties don’t suspect hearing loss is the core issue (or when the partner with hearing loss insists on ignoring their symptoms).
Living with a person who is dealing with loss of hearing
If hearing loss can lead to so much conflict in a relationship, how do you live with someone who has hearing loss? For couples who are willing to develop new communication strategies, this typically isn’t an issue. Some of those strategies include the following:
- When you repeat what you said, try using different words: When your partner doesn’t hear what you said, you will normally try repeating yourself. But try changing the words you use rather than using the same words. Hearing loss can impact some frequencies of speech more than others, which means certain words might be more difficult to understand (while others are easier). Changing your word choice can help strengthen your message.
- Try to communicate face-to-face as often as you can: For someone who has hearing loss, face-to-face communication can give lots of visual cues. Your partner will be able to read facial cues and body language. And with increased eye contact it will be easier to preserve concentration. By giving your partner more visual information to process they will have an easier time understanding what you mean.
- Help your partner get used to their hearing aids: Maybe you could do things like taking over the grocery shopping or other chores that cause your partner anxiety. You can also ask your partner’s hearing specialist if there are ways you can help them get used to their hearing aids.
- Encourage your partner to come in for a hearing exam: We can help your partner manage their hearing loss. Many areas of tension will fade away and communication will be more effective when hearing loss is well managed. Safety is also an issue with hearing loss because it can cause you to fail to hear the doorbell, phone, and smoke alarm. You might also fail to hear oncoming traffic. We can help your partner better regulate any of these potential problems.
- Patience: This is particularly relevant when you recognize that your partner is coping with hearing loss. You may need to change the way you talk, like raising your volume for example. It may also be necessary to talk in a slower cadence. This type of patience can be challenging, but it can also dramatically improve the effectiveness of your communication.
After you get diagnosed, what happens next?
A hearing test is a fairly simple, non-invasive experience. Usually, you will simply put on a set of headphones and listen for specific tones. You will be better able to manage your symptoms and your relationships after you get a diagnosis.
Encouraging your partner to touch base with us can help guarantee that hearing loss doesn’t sabotage your happiness or your partnership.